@bareboards2
pure and utter sophistry.

and i resent the fact that you slyly attempt to imply that i will just sit back and remain silent to injustice.

when i feel quite confident my records on this site prove the exact opposite.i have vociferously and aggressively taken on those who would bully,berate and belittle anyone who would voice their opinion.

i believe i have come to YOUR defense on more than one occasion.

what i found disturbing in your comment and maybe i should clarify is this "As Homeland Security says, if you see something, say something."

this is LITERALLY what was posted on almost every open venue in east germany.

and for you to tacitly excuse this statement by dismissively stating that "the stasi operated in secret".as somehow being evidence of your own righteousness belies an ignorance of just how oppressive and fearful those people were living in those conditions.

so you are morally superior because you openly called to out,and i quote "benevolent dictator with a light touch",and did not do so in private?
THIS is your justification?
THIS is the evidence you present to me to...what? exactly?

if you truly feel that you have somehow struck a blow for justice and taken a stand for moral integrity,then i submit that you have no clue what free speech really entales,nor do you understand the implications when we,as a community,start calling in the big daddy in the sky every time someone writes an offensive potty/racist or bigoted word.

and just LOOK how you consumed @gorillaman 's comment.
you made no reference to his salient point,but rather focused on ONE thing:nigger prince.

now was this appropriate?
taken singularly i would have to agree with you.
no..it is not appropriate.

but when we take our understandings of @gorillaman,who has been a contributing sifter for over 10 years,and consider his humor..which is dark and incredibly dry (like sahara dry),then with this context added to the mix,we can conclude that he was probably making a joke...you are certainly within your rights to find that joke in poor taste,and with this community,you are also within your rights (and even encouraged) to take @gorillaman to task for his poor taste.

but instead you called for big daddy in the sky to bring the hammer of justice down,and punish this dirt potty mouthed racist.his crime?
racist verbiage.

no consideration of who was writing it.
no consideration of his history on this site,which you openly admitted is a community.
you just..focused..on..the..word.

and then you preen like a peacock thinking somehow you have struck a blow of righteousness?

please sister.....you accomplished nothing except to put dag in an awkward position,and came across as a self righteous moralizer.

when you simply could have done what other sifters here actually DID.
you downvote his comment.
and if you felt so inclined,and it appears you ARE so inclined,directly call @gorillaman out for his poor choice of verbiage.

look BB,
i actually find you to be a sweetheart,with a huuuuge propensity for empathy and compassion,but every time i engage with you my sphincter tightens up like it is preparing for a colonoscopy.there is this ever-present apprehension that my words will not be taken with humanity that they are written,or the open honesty i am trying to convey.

i am sure that if we were actually sitting in a cafe,sipping that delicious coffee you guys are so proud of, i would not experience this anxiety when engaging with you,but it seems EVERY time i disagree with something you post,or an opinion i may take issue with,i offend you in some manner.

you ..and i am sure this is not done on purpose..make it incredibly difficult to disagree with something you post,because i always feel i have hurt your feelings somehow.

real or imagined...i am just being honest here.i always approach any interaction with you as if i am walking on eggshells,underlined with landmines.

i am simply disagreeing with you here.
calling for a ban on gorillaman because of a joke made in poor taste,while simultaneously disregarding his contributions to this site,and taking his personality into consideration,is simply an over-zealous reaction and in no way deserves the attention of dag.

because if gorillaman deserves to be banned for an offensive phrase,than i should be banned as well.

free speech is just that...free.
of course we are free to ridicule that speech.
yaaay free speech!

@enoch

The Stasi worked in secrecy. I am in the open. And I left it to dag.

We have a pretty good community here. Unlike reddit. Unlike 4chan. Unlike places that allow "free speech" that drives out people who can't stomach despicable behavior. And we have it because we have community standards and a benevolent dictator with a light touch and a willingness to step in.

I'll speak up for this community. I think it is worth it.

It is the Nazis and the KKK who used derogatory language to demean and marginalize huge swaths of the population.

Are you going to call out the person who is acting like a Nazi/KKK member? Since you were so quick to call out me?

Or are you going to stand by and let it pass. Do nothing. Say nothing. Act as if what was said was nothing.

Let me be me. Let dag be dag. And you be the person you want to be.

I'm happy with me. Hell, I'm proud of me.

Its pretty cool that its one shot, it must have been a really hard thing to coordinate and time perfectly, but I thought the majority of punches here REALLY look like obvious fake moviepunches, ie, a punch in the face is a light touch on the shoulder. I know that they ARE movie punches in every movie, obviously, but shooting from the right angle usually hides the cheat. In this shot, i guess they sacrificed that to get it all in one shot, but imo, that killed the realism.

My assumption is that people don't do these things because they are intrinsically better (even though I can accept that they could easily be), they do it to make themselves seem important and special.

Eating sushi in "the correct way" is also not popular, the wrong way is popular - who's the one trying to avoid conforming to the peasantry now?

People make fun of this video, because it's not about teaching you how it should be done, it's about him showing off all the fancy things he knows about sushi and talking japanese; Look I'm so cool, I do it the right way. It reminds me of that hilarious application video that was spoofed by Michael Cera: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Is_Nothing_(video_r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9)

If the main point is to teach people to do something right, then teach it nicely - it's even more compounded by the level of self-importance in this thread.

Some times there's a correct way and there's another perfectly fine way - I know, shocking. People don't all like the things you like, oh gosh, say it isn't so.

You, @NinjaInHeat and @arekin (and I suppose the guy in the video) are the three amigos who want to cram the "correct sushi" down everyones' throats - I am not trying to force you to eat the regular rice-cake sushi that normal people do, you can do what you want.

In essence what you would call "correct sushi" is an entirely different dish than what is normally known as sushi, so it's sort of a silly argument in the end.

I guess my main point of contrition has nothing to do with sushi, but to do with the way in which it is presented. It stinks of aristocracy - people who know the right way and therefore snub their nose at all the others who clearly "just don't get it" - well fuck, there's not really much to get, you like to eat it in a certain way - whoopdefrickingdoo.

"You know, real hambruger is hand picked from the kobecow and processed right in front of you. And be careful to only use a light touch of ketchup as a pallate cleanser, and to convey the intended feelings of camaraderie that the chef wanted you to feel with him and his cultural heritage.. and be sure to drink plenty of Sprite - this is the way to properly enjoy hamburger, otherwise you might as well just eat some raw fish or something like a fucking retard who don't even know that you only lightly dip the corner of the bun in grey poupon mustard".

Bah humbug.

A light touch for a dog, a cat on the other hand would have popped that thing in a heartbeat.

I'm on the fence about that. I half want to see it looking good, and half want to see it the way it was. The only thing I really don't like visually about TNG is the foam rocks, and I doubt any amount of light touch editing will fix that.>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^messenger:
I prefer the old one because the effects are part of the time it came from. Having advanced graphics is anachronistic and takes me out of the story.
(and I don't have a lawn)

It's not the effects that bother me as much as the crappy video quality. It's blurred and the colour grading is awful.

>> ^messenger:

I prefer the old one because the effects are part of the time it came from. Having advanced graphics is anachronistic and takes me out of the story.
(and I don't have a lawn)

Oh, and in case you haven't seen what they did with TOS, they handle the effects with a light touch. It isn't too distracting or anachronistic at all. It's very respectful of the source material.

This is parody done with an extremely light touch, really - and is amazingly inoffensive. There's not really any reason this music couldn't have come from a believing Mormon.

To underscore that point, it's not much different than stuff members have produced themselves (partially with the intent of demonstrating that they don't always take themselves completely seriously). For example, productions of "Saturday's Warrior" by various Mormon groups and units were extremely popular in the 70's and 80's, and the missionaries in it are at least as goofy as the ones in the BoM musical. I couldn't find a video of the stage production - but this song is normally performed by a chorus line of missionaries in sunglasses (again, in Mormon churches with approval by a bishop).

Even most devout/lame Mormons I know see the BoM musical as positive publicity that's surprisingly inoffensive (similar to South Park's Mormon bits, which generally were quite popular with Church members). The "official" church isn't exactly going to sanction it, but the position it has taken - something like "we hope people will come to us to get the real story" is pretty dang close.

All for the sake of not wanting to lightly touch the break and wait for the gap to increase?

if it has wires, what the hell is the point?
have a rangefinder fixed to an electromagnet and you can adjust the height to whatever you want
like nearly all these floating projects do
you could even do cool stuff like when there's nobody on it, have it float a few centimeters off the ground, and when weight is detected on it, like just lightly touching it, it rises to normal height so you can lay down on it
or perhaps the other way around.. have it normally sit high above the ground as a table and once you place enough weight on it, it goes down to bed's height

>> ^dgandhi:
He repeatedly grabbed her by the wrists and moved her around, I surmise that the relative stiffness of her arms/wrists is how he got most of his information.


Hypnotists use light touches like that to gauge susceptibility to subtle forms of suggestion and to help cue up certain decisions and reactions. It's just as likely he was trying to suggest which hand to put it in.

who WAs that guy? she obviously wanted nothing to do with him or the bottles he was offering as...? Nice french manicure and light touch.

The secrecy is both cute and understandable, although mlx's point is valid to a degree too.

There's a finite number of variables affecting popularity - one issue given the secrecy, though, is how we can tell if "it's working", at least during the beta stage? With little more to go on other than our delicious speculation, the "light touch" theory seems apt:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Futurama-Bender-as-God

I'm going to throw out some ideas, and re-iterate a guess of what siftbot might be "into".
- votes over time - easy
- comments - some permutation, again probably including frequency over time
- age? <- I'm still curious to know how the promote function will interact - will it be an AUTOMEGABOOST to front? It should be - we really need clarification from siftbot on this point (*-promote), even if all others are ignored, otherwise that function may just as well be disabled - individual voter composition - no one's mentioned this, but I can only imagine how delicious a factor this can be: it would actually give REAL weight to people who vote intermittently (or heavily, as the case may be). This is something I would heartiliy agree should have a justificably secret algorithm, should something so wild be introduced, because it would A. throw off the whole 1 vote = 1 vote mechanism we've had to date, and B. make people feel incredibly self-conscious about their voting patterns (not voting up/down enough, or doing so too much, etc.). Additional variables could include power of vote as a function of votes casts vs. videos sifted vs. comments made

I suspect that last one might not be a full-fledged item (or may not even exist) simply because of the potentially horrendous processing power a sufficiently unnecessarily complicated formula could suck off the server.

Having said that, voter composition vs. all other factors would be an ever-present possibility.

Association with channels favourites, playlists, collectives and even mincing about with tags are other possibilities (give more/less weight to video based on popularity of tags alone).

Once the new system becomes public, it'll be in siftbot's favour for as many of these variables to be considered, because the more variables you give, the greater the futility of an exercise in 'breaking the system' through datamining or other variance analysis (what's the name of that cover in statistics? It's not ANOVA... it's the line that passes through the most points in something like a scattergraph?)... anyway, I'm running off an a second year university stats course tangent, and my mark in that course was hardly high enough to justify a long winded dissertation so I'll just reiterate my point: http://www.videosift.com/video/Futurama-Bender-as-God

Nice bit. But of course is just a rationalization of people who believe in god, and are mad at him for not doing anything, so they come up with that "light touch" theory.. meh!